Saturday, May 31, 2008

carnival of animals - the swan

sometimes when friends get together who knows what kind of zaniness will happen! this was the case when ched and I got together this week. perhaps it was because we were in the rarefied atmosphere of chedwick universersity or maybe it's because we are both bloggers who share a somewhat 'interesting' take on the world and delight in our quirky cyberhood (the hood is always open and growing).

any ol' way, ched and the mouse hatched a plan. we thought it might be fun if one day a week there was a theme that we could play with.....

in the tradition of reya's blog poetry slam, junk's interactive mondays (or fridays, saturdays, or sundays - hey junk is junk and you never know when the grand pooh-bah of junk proclaims that it's an interactive day!) . anyway, we did think others might enjoy playing.

here's the plan we hatched:

1) thursday is theme day (both ched and the mouse are quite fond of wordplay so it is only natural that thursday is the day designated as theme day!)

2) several days before thursday, a theme will be posted on the side bar of mouse medicine and tangled up in l'heure bleue - we expect the theme will be a single word - how people interpret the theme is totally up to them - it can be a picture, a poem, a story, a song, anything that can be put on one's blog. interpretation of the theme is only limited by one's imagination.

3) any blogger interested in participating plays - it's as simple as that! we haven't worked an easy way that one can let others know that they are playing - if anyone has an idea as how to work out this knot, let us know!

personally, I think we there was some subliminal magic happening on wednesday we kept encountering swans. swan medicine as some of you might know is pretty powerful stuff!

tut - curious minds want to know. this is what I discovered regarding english words with no rhyming partner:

"Orange" is the only word without a rhyme. But it's trickier than that.

There are three other words without a rhyme, some people argue - the words "purple," "silver," and "month."

But fortunately, it's possible to create a near rhyme for any of these words if a "loose" rhyming scheme is allowed. For example, "orange" contains two easily-rhymed sounds - "or" and "inge." Five possible rhymes appeared over eleven years ago in an internet newsgroup. (For example, "When he's pelted with an orange, my friend Mike sounds like a door hinge...")

And while the word "hurtful" is not a very good rhyme for "purple," it might be acceptable in certain circumstances.

But even then, there's more than four words without a rhyme, if a strict rhyming scheme is required. For example, "bachelor" almost rhymes with "spatula" - but a strict rhyme would require a three-syllable rhyme containing both a "ch" in the middle and an "or" at its end. Following this rule, there's many more words without a perfect rhyme.

Ironically, this rules means new problems for poets trying to replace the word "orange" with a different word like "citrus" - since this strict rhyming scheme means there's also no word which rhymes with "citrus!"

A web page on Wikipedia has collected over 60 words which strictly speaking have no perfect rhyme - although the page also notes that some rhymes can be found using obscure or archaic words. For example, an old Scottish word "hurple" means to hobble while lame, and offers a perfect match for the word "purple."

And there is a perfect rhyme for the word "orange" - if you use the right dictionary. Both Webster's Third Unabridged and the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary include an entry for the word "sporange," an obscure term used only by botanists.

But these technicalities only interfere with the fun of this startling linguistic truth. In conversational English, there are a lot of unique words that just don't rhyme with anything.

dennis - you are such a sensitive soul - that is why I do love you and can't understand daisy AT ALL!

bob - you are most welcome, I hope you had a fun birthday and had your favorite ice cream and cake

save the fish!

cost of the war

join the movement for non-violence

click on button to take the vow

unless noted otherwise, all photos on the mouse are taken by me, kim yanoshik. you are welcome to use them if credit is given. if you seek to make a profit, you need to first ask permission to use the photo; then you are obliged to share that profit with yours truly, otherwise karma will catch up with you!